Paul Hosford: After nearly two years of inactivity the North's parties have much to fix
With a plenary sitting in Stormont called for Saturday afternoon, the North will take its first steps towards a new era, one which for the first time will see a nationalist elected to the role of First Minister.
At 1pm on Saturday, after 24 months of inaction, Northern Irish MLAs will return to Stormont.
Nearly two years of political stasis ended this week when the DUP agreed new rules around imports and exports that will see the end of routine post-Brexit checks on goods shipped from Great Britain to final destinations in Northern Ireland, as well as a series of measures aimed at providing assurances around Northern Ireland’s constitutional position within the United Kingdom.
The deal comes just weeks after 150,000 public sector workers went on strike in the North in protest at pay rises which had not been forthcoming because government workers can't get a pay increase if there's no government. The British government had offered £3.3 billion to get devolution restored, but wouldn't budge on releasing the funds as it was a devolved responsibility.
All the while, the DUP and its leader Jeffrey Donaldson were in protracted talks with Rishi Sunak's government in a bid to alter the Windsor Framework, which in February 2023 was hailed as a "new chapter" in the EU-UK relationship but which had been rejected by the party.
By last weekend, it became clear that those talks had reached something of an endgame. Then, on Monday, Mr Donaldson convened his party executive in County Down. However, even with precaution taken to ensure that the location was kept under wraps, around 50 DUP protesters made their way to the Larchfield Estate, some carrying signs accusing those inside of being "sell-outs".
Worse was to come inside the room, however, as it soon became clear that Loyalist activist Jamie Bryson was being fed a live feed of what was being said and was tweeting contributions as they happened. The scene reached farcical levels as Bryson tweeted about himself in the third person, posting: “DUP meeting descends into mayhem. JD saying texts being sent to Jamie Bryson who is giving a blow by blow account to the meeting”.
Users of the social media site quickly dubbed the incident "Flagatha Christie", a nod to both 2013's controversy over the flying of flags over Belfast City Hall and the Colleen Rooney/Rebekah Vardy saga.
Meanwhile, Mr Donaldson made the case to his party that the agreement is the best deal that could be achieved to secure Northern Ireland's place within the union.
Indeed, the command paper released by the British government is called "Safeguarding The Union" and commits to replacing the current green lane process, which requires percentages of goods to be checked as they arrive from Britain, with a “UK internal market system” that will govern the movement of goods that will remain within the United Kingdom.
While some have said that this is merely tinkering around the edges of the framework, Mr Donaldson has been able to sell it as the mechanism necessary to end the Irish Sea trade border and pave the way for the assembly at Stormont to be re-established, two years to the day since Paul Givan resigned as First Minister, collapsing the devolved parliament.
With the Northern Irish discussions on the document feeling like a high-wire act, the actual agreement passed the House of Commons with barely a shrug.
Mr Donaldson told the chamber that the North had been "placed in a situation where we were separated from the rest of the United Kingdom in key elements of the benefits that ought to have flown from Brexit", and that it was now his mission to "repair the damage".
With a plenary sitting called for Saturday afternoon, the North will take its first steps towards a new era, one which for the first time will see a nationalist elected to the role of First Minister as Michelle O'Neill takes on the role following Sinn Féin's success in the 2022 Northern Assembly elections.
The SDLP's Matthew O'Toole will lead the opposition, but has his own minor issue as one of his MLAs — Newry and Armagh's Justin McNulty — is a selector for the Laois men’s senior football team, who are set to take on Wexford on Saturday evening at 6pm.
After two years of citing post-Brexit trading arrangements as a reason to stay out of Stormont, Saturday will merely be the beginning of the test for the DUP. They and Sinn Féin assume power of a country which has major issues in health and housing, with public sector staff due a pay rise and with eight years' of political and civil tensions caused by the fall-out of Brexit.
While Mr Donaldson focused on repairing the damage of the last two years on the union, there is much more to be fixed.
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